Thursday, February 28, 2013

I was back east earlier in the month and spent part of an afternoon in Jersey City, New Jersey photographing buildings and visiting places my Badendick great-grandparents knew in the early part of the 20th century. According to family history, Carl Badendick came to this country from Barth, a small village on the Baltic Sea in Pomerania (now Germany) around 1880. He married my great-grandmother, Bertha Zerull on 9th September 1883 in Jersey City and they lived there for the rest of their lives. Carl died in 1916, and Bertha in 1931.
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Current photo of former Badendick home
Corner of van Reypen Street and Stuyvesant Avenue
Jersey City, NJ

I remember visiting the house they had lived in when I was a very young child when some of my great aunts were still alive. I remember nothing of the inside but I do remember what seemed to me to be really tall front steps! Here is a photo of my great-aunt Edith Badendick on what I think are those same steps around 1900.

Edith Badendick

My great-grandfather operated a small store at the other end of the block from their residence, on the corner of Stuyvesant Avenue and what was then Hudson County Boulevard and is now John F Kennedy Blvd.

Carl Badendick's store on the corner of Stuyvesant and the Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ
around 1900

February 2013

The building is still recognizable with only a few modifications. The door has been moved from the corner to the center of the front facade, and the cupola has been modified. The store is now a coffee shop and 99 cent store. The sign in the window in the old photo says cigars and tobacco on one side, and confectionery on the other. There is a sign out front of the store advertising Reid's ice cream.

I plan to do more research with the deeds I have found for the house and store. I suspect some of the building numbering has changed over the years which makes it difficult to detrmine which plots of land and buildings are in the deeds I have. Family history as well as some newspaper clippings indicate Carl ran a saloon in the basement of what I assume was his store. More research is needed to determine if this was indeed the same location.